tle wolf! Diamond cut diamond!" laughed Narses. "Always
Germans against Germans; there are too many of you in the world!"

"You seem to have the same fatherly opinion about the Isaurians--at
least about _mine_!--magister militum," said Cethegus. "Shortly before
their departure for Rome, you ordered my Isaurians to storm the pass in
mass--the first storming-party in mass that you had ever ordered! Seven
hundred of my seven thousand remained dead upon those rocks, and
Sandil, my tried and faithful chief, at last found this Black Earl's
axe too sharp for his helmet. He was very valuable to me."

"Well, the rest are safe in Rome. But nothing except fire can drive
these Goths out of their last hole; unless indeed the earth would do me
the favour to quake, as it did at Ravenna when Belisarius----"

"Is there still no news of the result of the process against
Belisarius?" asked Cethegus. "Letters came lately from Byzantium, did
they not?"

"I have not yet read them all.--Or, if not fire--then hunger. And if
they then sally forth for a last battle, many a brave man would rather
hear the murmur of the Ganges than the murmur of the Draco. Not you,
Prefect! I know that you can look boldly into the eye of death."

"I will still wait here a little and see how things turn out. It is bad
travelling weather. It storms and rains unceasingly. On the first or
second warm sunshiny day, I will start for Rome."

It was true. On the night of the departure of the Isaurians, the
weather had suddenly changed. The fisherman, who dwelt in a village
near Stabiae, could not venture out upon the sea; less on account of the
storm than because of the Longobardians, who had long been watching him
with suspicion, and who had once arrested him. Only when his old father
came forward and proved that Agnellus was really his, the old
fisherman's son, did they hesitatingly let him go free. But he did not
dare to pretend to fish, when no other fisher threw out his nets; and
only far out upon the water could Syphax, who was also closely watched,
venture to communicate with him.

The exits of all the camps, even of the half-deserted camp of
Cethegus--Narses had placed only three thousand Thracians and Persians
in the tents deserted by the Isaurians--were guarded night and day by
the Longobardians. And Narses was also obliged to postpone his baths
for some days. But for the secrets, namely, the letter from Procopius
and the conversation held by Narses in